E30 fanatics (am I automatically considered one for using alphanumerical platform codes?) love digging deep for special editions and casually name-dropping things like “Sport Evo,” “Cecotto,” and “M-Tech 1” or even “M-Tech 2!” Today’s right-hand drive Sport Edition is a new one for me and was available in Europe, Japan, Australia, and South Africa. If you like shifting out of “Park” with your left hand and enjoy constantly wondering where the double yellow lines are, this special-edition 325i could be yours for just a bit more than a standard E30. That’s right: as bonus feature, it has a rebuilt Sport slushbox! The 325i Sport’s autotragic was way before its time, incorporating BMW’s now-ubiquitous and seemingly-endless shifting options in the form of 3 settings – choose your adventure! Redlining the M20 isn’t just for clutch-capable teenage hoons anymore, Americans! With moderate mileage and the subdued Delphin Grey, you can confuse children in a car that appears to have no driver while appearing to enthusiasts like just another dude in an E30 with a mediocre bodykit and some rust bubbles.
Category: BMW
Though personally invested, I’m still skeptical of the recent prices we’ve seen E28 M5s being listed for. It seems like reasonable examples were going for high teens just a few months ago, yet all of a sudden it seems any clean sub-150k mile example is going for over $30k. Today’s example is one of the rare Canadian models with the all-black interior, which is a fun idea but much less appealing (to my eyes at least) than the tan interiors present on the other 99%. It has just 124k miles and appears to be in good working order, but it’s not like the shockingly clean examples we’ve featured recently. It’s lived through 4 owners and the maintenance history is disappointingly lacking. The E28 community seems to express a collective “meh” when black-interior cars are brought up, but some like the color and rarity. Have E28 M5 prices really gone up 100% over the last year?
Click for details: 1988 BMW E28 M5 on eBay
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I’ve made several references comparing the BMW 8 series to a few Ferraris, suggesting that it was perhaps a budget alternative to running a 456GT, for example. However, the E31 isn’t the only Ferrari-esque design to come from Munich; in many aspects, the E9 coupe shared some visual DNA with the Ferrari 330 2+2 from the 1960s. Now, for some that may sound like heresy and I can appreciate that; but take off the Rosso-colored glasses for a moment and look at the side profile of a 330 GT versus the E9 coupe; it’s nearly identical. The rear end treatment was quite similar as well, and while the grill on the BMW was obviously quite different the two even shared a quad-headlight setup. Obviously, underneath the Ferrari had that wonderful Colombo V12 versus the rather pedestrian inline-6 in the BMW; but pound for pound the BMW punched hard, especially in CSi trim. With 200 horsepower on tap it was certainly no slouch, especially in the midst of the oil crisis which neutered most V8s in America. It would take another two generations for the Big Three to break back into the 200 horsepower realm with nearly double the displacement of the E9. But the E9 wasn’t about straight line performance; it was a whole package – a speedy grand touring coupe with luxurious appointments and gorgeous looks:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1974 BMW 3.0CSi on eBay
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In the 1980s and early 1990s, Dinan was still on the cutting edge of performance tuning. As with Reeves Callaway, Steve Dinan had started turbocharging BMWs to create supercar-slaying sedans and coupes. At that point, Dinan was a lesser-known tuner than the likes of Alpina and Hartge, but the results of their turbocharging the S38 in the BMW M6 notably gained the car the nickname “The Annihilator”. That should tell you something of the level to which Dinan Cars brings their creations to whilst retaining the original attributes of the base car. It’s a special combination that resulted in Dinan being incorporated into the BMW dealer network; today, cruise down to your dealership and you can buy Dinan products and software upgrades for just about any model and retain your warranty. Because of that connection, an appreciation for early Dinan cars continues to grow though in general they remain more affordable than their German tuner counterparts. They are, however, just as rare to come across – especially when they come in the condition of today’s 1991 535i, one of the last of Dinan’s inline-6 turbo creations:
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 1991 BMW 535i Dinan Turbo on GCFSB
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Atlantis Blue. It’s probably a color that at least one person – probably many – at BMW hate. Why? Well, it was the color that was involved with perhaps one of the biggest PR mistakes in the automotive world in 2013. It was in that year that a BMW enthusiast had saved up to finally special order a new M3 from BMW’s Individual program in the shade. However, somewhere along the way the order was translated incorrectly and the M3 was produced in the Individual shade of Atlantic Blue. Predictably, the enthusiast (who, incidentally, had flown to Germany for European delivery of his prized M3) was immediately not pleased that the presented M3 was in the wrong shade. Complicating the matter was that BMW had ended the E92 production line, so no new M3s could be built to replace the incorrectly-colored car. The fora lit up with punters on both sides flinging insults at this enthusiast and each other; perhaps it was a perfect example of a first-world problem as some claimed, but personally I don’t think I would have accepted the car, either.
Regardless of your opinion on the outcome of the situation, the story instantly popped into my head when I saw this 1976 2002 that was repainted in the shade the above described buyer wanted – the beautiful shade of Atlantis Blue, which replaced the car’s original Fjord Blue: